Alastair White — Seven Tales From Granton Breakwater, performed by .abeceda [new music ensemble]

GRANTON BREAKWATER tl;dr — like a graphic score but with prose instead of pictures. Granton Breakwater asks .abeceda to write and interpret stories as music. in this, develops the methodology of two previous collaborations with the ensemble, Twelve Maps For A Chalk Ridge (premiered at its festival in 2023) and COMPOSITION ONE (2024), through the concept of the programme; specifically, the notion that the narrative music of the romantic period constituted a radical approach to reorganising form. While much music now claims to be programmatic—whether expressing a political idea or a personal emotion—it has lost the revolutionary core of absence-as-form that makes this tradition so powerful. I believe it is worth reclaiming this: the nonmusical remainder that becomes the structural keystone; the absence that becomes presence; the darkness that illuminates. Perhaps one way of thinking about this new work might be this: a piece in which the programme note has grown so large as to block out the score, as in Borges’ oft-quoted concept of a 1:1 scale map. "In that Empire, the Cartographer’s art achieved such a degree of perfection that the Map of a single Province occupied an entire City, and the Map of the Empire, an entire Province. In time, these vast Maps were no longer sufficient. The Guild of Cartographers created a Map of the Empire, which perfectly coincided with the Empire itself. But Succeeding Generations, with diminished interest in the Study of Cartography, believed that this immense Map was of no use, and not Impiously, they abandoned it to the Inclemency of the Sun and of numerous Winters. In the Deserts of the West ruined Fragments of the Map survive, inhabited by Animals and Beggars…" Umberto Eco comments that “when the map is installed over all the territory (whether suspended or not), the territory of the empire has the characteristic of being a territory entirely covered by a map. The map does not take into account this characteristic, which would have to be presented on another map that depicted the territory plus the lower map. But such a process would be infinite. Two corollaries follow: 1. Every 1:1 map always reproduces the territory unfaithfully. 2. At the moment the map is realised, the empire become unreproducible." One way of mapping Seven Tales From Granton Breakwater would be through the underlying sonnet form that structures it. Each "line" of the work lasts one minute, with sections dovetailing upon one another. Thus: A viola — solo B flute — solo B flute — with ensemble A viola — with ensemble C sax — solo D accordion — with ensemble C sax — with ensemble D accordion — solo E harp — with ensemble F piano — with ensemble F piano — solo E harp — solo G percussion — with ensemble G percussion — solo And that’s it. There’s no material. Not musical, at least. The material emerges from darkness, from the inconstancy and confusion of translation, in that each "line" of music is a programmatic adaptation of prose—of a story, a tale. These the ensemble must write themselves. They are instructed to read an original work of fiction, Granton Breakwater, which itself adapts certain compositional devices from Scottish Black and Spanish Black into literary counterparts. The narrative of the work is that of a young man struggling to become a poet; but this is secondary to the mode of its telling, which is defined by darkness, chiaroscuro, obscurity—by broken slats of light. It finishes with the protagonist meeting his doppelgänger at the end of the eponymous stretch of concrete in the Forth, whereupon seven tales are told to him (cf. The 1001 Nights and Confessions of A Justified Sinner) until, through their recounting, the identity of this strange double is revealed. It is these "seven tales" that the ensemble must create, adapting one or more aspects of Granton Breakwater: elements of material, structure, form, style, theme, whatever—but there must be at least one causal link between their new works and this origin. Each instrumentalist then passes their creation onwards through the sonnet’s list to the next in line, who uses this newly written piece of fiction as the programmatic material for a one-minute composition. Though this may be improvisatory, free improvisation is not permitted. Rather, the compositions must represent as clearly as possible an attempt to illustrate their received story in music—which includes both its narrative and style; its material, form and structure. All through a simple 1:1 notion of signification. This translation is then performed once alone and once with the ensemble, which the conductor interventionally arranges according to their own deconstructive reading of the text: one that apprehends its lack, its subconscious, its inexistent.